Middle Georgia made national headlines Wednesday, March 18, 2015 after sorority and fraternity leaders at the University of Georgia chose to ban or discourage the wearing of hoop skirts at events this spring during Kappa Alpha’s Old South Week and Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s Magnolia Ball. The issue has immediately been seen as another moment of academic censorship, and another data point in the rise of overbearing political correctness.

In this particular case, both of those characterizations seem dubious. Here’s why. … Continue Reading

By Jack Ellis, former Mayor of Macon, Georgia, March 22, 2015, Macon, Georgia:

I was disappointed to learn that Georgia’s senior U.S. senator, Johnny Isakson, had signed the ill-conceived March 9, 2015 letter to Iran circulated by Senator Tom Cotton, a junior senator from Arkansas who’d only been in the Senate for two short months. Cotton was quickly joined by another junior, inexperienced senator, Georgia’s David Perdue. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to the letter eventually signed by 47 Republican senators as “unprecedented and un-thought-out.”

The junior senators may be excused for their inexperience. Isakson cannot. … Continue Reading

Being in the Bible Belt with as many churches as Macon has, you might think there’d be more fire flaming from Macon’s pulpits. There’s still some fire, though, if you know where to look for it.

Macon Monitor staff and friends had the opportunity this past week to hear one fired-up preacher, Dr. Charley Chase, who, despite being of grandparental age, manages to get the rapt attention of a difficult-to-reach cohort, including hundreds of high-school students, perhaps the most difficult of all to reach.

Chase has been the chaplain for First Presbyterian Day School in Macon, Georgia, for the past eight years, and you can see why. The Monitor invited Chase to explain what fires him and his student followers.

Monitor: What had you done before coming to FPD, and how did that inform your work with young people in the past few years?

Chase: I’d served in parish ministry for 30 years before coming to FPD. For most of that time, my preaching wasn’t really on fire. It was more like a birthday candle than a nuclear blast. I had a sort of Road-to-Damascus moment shortly before I came to FPD, though, and began … Continue Reading

This dog fight will go on. On Monday, March 9, 2015, five members of the Macon-Bibb County Board of Health split 3-2 on whether to deem three female pitbull dogs, Cocoa, Pearl and Justice, “dangerous.” As previously reported in the Macon Monitor, those dogs were involved in the death of another dog, Renalto, that was passing by the pitbulls’ home on a walk with Renalto’s owner, Claudio Naranjo, from Miami. The pitbulls are owned by Ryan Brinson and kept at the home of his mother, Veronica Brinson, at 124 Brookefield Drive in the Brookefield subdivision of north Macon off Bowman Road.

Board of Health members Bert Bivins, Ethel Cullinan and David Garrow voted to find the dogs “dangerous” within the meaning of both state law and a Macon-Bibb ordinance. Two other Board members, … Continue Reading